This was supposed to be the year when everything about presidential politics would change. Instead, the 2008 campaign is hurtling toward its conclusion as a year in which most things have stayed drearily the same.

Recall the early promise of 2008: There would be two candidates who spent the past several years expressing disdain for the stale partisanship of Washington and the stupid pet tricks that characterize presidential campaigns. There was an electorate supposedly hungering not for a change of leaders but a change in the fundamental ways in which politicians compete and debate ideas and solve problems.

For the first time in over 30 years there would be a campaign with no one named Bush or Clinton on the ticket. New personalities would drive new coalitions, as some liberals embraced John McCain’s independent-mindedness and spontaneity and some conservatives responded to Obama's earnest appeals to transcend old ideological and cultural divides.

New personalities and new coalitions, in turn, would create a new map—as the whole nation would be in play rather than a targeted set of battleground states.

Well, forget it: Six weeks before Election Day, a day before the first scheduled debate, the forces of innovation and authenticity are being routed by the forces of conventionality and cliché.

There are many reasons why this is so. Part of the answer is that Obama and McCain are more timid and less creative figures than they looked to be a year ago.

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The larger story is that the incentives in American politics rewarding politics as usual—especially in our own business, the media—are far more powerful than either candidate’s tentative and inconsistent impulses to challenge politics as usual.

New candidates? In their rhetorical thrusts, and policy agendas there are few if any stark differences between McCain’s campaign this year and George W. Bush’s in 2004, or between Obama’s and John F. Kerry’s.

New coalitions? It sounded intriguing, but it seems increasingly unlikely. Evangelical voters, for instance, favor McCain (57 percent to 20 percent) by essentially the same margin they backed Bush in 2004, according to a study by the widely respected John Green of the University of Akron. Obama’s hopes basically rest on the same strategy that nearly worked for Kerry: Amped up turnout by young people, urban minorities, and upscale liberals, especially women who support abortion rights.

A new map? It’s definitely a little wider than in 2004, thanks to Obama’s big financial edge and his ability to compete seriously in a small number of traditionally Republican states like Virginia. But, a recent video sent by the Obama campaign to supporters identified just 17 battleground states, and the campaign is retreating from states like North Dakota and Montana. In the end, the most likely state to determine the race is, as in 2004, Ohio.

Even the one bold move of recent months—McCain’s selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate—served mainly to reframe the race along old lines in the culture wars.

The durability of these old habits even as new issues and problems—the financial crisis, energy prices, the situation in Iraq, elite opinion about the science behind global warming—change dramatically suggests a political culture with a dangerous inability to adapt to circumstances.

There are at least five major reasons why American politics is stuck in a rut:

*Media madness. Reporters complain about the lack of spontaneity in politics. Then we punish spontaneity by ensuring that any impolitic comment gets played and replayed, often simplified and distorted in each replaying—usually accompanied with disapproving analysis about a candidate’s lack of discipline and inability to stay on message.

The lack of press access to both candidates this fall is frustrating. But the truth is McCain would be foolish to indulge in the kind of free-flowing, free-associating conversations that won such notice in 2000. Obama’s natural instincts are to tightly control his image and words, which works nicely in this media environment.

An unscripted campaign would be more interesting and more useful to voters, but it would require two unlikely ingredients: Candidates self-confident enough to throw out the script, and a news media that would devote as much attention to ideas as to gaffes.

Conventional politics works. This is the ugly truth of politics: the predictable tactics of modern campaigns are often brutally effective. Both candidates promised to run cleaner campaigns.

“They’re tired of the attacks,” McCain said in April. “They’re tired of the impugning people’s character and integrity. They want a respectful campaign.”

“They” can wait.

Behind in polls, McCain calculated he had little choice but to muddy Obama’s image. The celebrity ads and subsequent attacks on Obama’s readiness did their job. Obama – in part because of a tightening race and because he doesn’t want to look like a patsy – had little choice but to fire back. McCain’s admission that he did not know how many houses he owned was simply too irresistible.

McCain’s attacks have been more garish and ostentatiously misleading—such as his claim that Obama wants sex ed for kindergartners. But Obama has also made serious false claims about McCain’s record, such as when he reached into the hoariest Democratic tactic of all by accusing his opponent of being ready to throw elderly Floridians into poverty with his Social Security plan (which would not affect any current pensioners.)

For a moment, the “post partisan” Obama and “straight-talking” McCain again seemed like they might genuinely be willing to throw out this playbook.

In fact, both candidates have flip-flopped to fit the mood of their party or the country. It has been many months since either man has taken a genuinely courageous position in this campaign, one that ran clearly against polls or challenged an important constituency in their own coalitions to sacrifice self-interest for the national interest. Both have made what look like baldly political moves to meet the moment.

McCain backed the gas-tax holiday, which nearly every serious analyst said would do little to reduce prices at the pump or attack the root problem. Obama backed more domestic drilling only when it was clearly the popular political thing to do. Both have played games with social issues to placate specific audiences.

Same players, same tactics. One big reason this campaign feels so familiar is all the familiar faces in the middle of it. McCain, for instance, is guided by all kinds of veterans of the George W. Bush campaigns, people who were schooled by Bush strategist Karl Rove. There’s Steve Schmidt – the message guru for Bush in 2004 – running it. There’s Nicolle Wallace – the public face for Bush in 2004 – doing the same thing for McCain.

So it should comes as no surprise that McCain is grabbing into Bush’s bag of tricks. There’s constant barrage of attack ads. Then there’s the relentless effort to portray Obama as an exotic, effete elitist who would be a weak commander in chief.

It’s not like Obama has turned to a bunch of fresh faces either. David Axelrod is the strategist who deserves a ton of credit for Obama’s rocket rise to the top. But his approach has not been especially novel. Axelrod – the mastermind of John Edwards’ populist uprising – is a firm believer in using a powerful life narrative to drive a campaign. Sound familiar? He also gets much of his advice from the staff of former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, hardly an unconventional force in politics. The latest advice flooding in: let no McCain attack go answered.

Obama and McCain weren’t that unconventional to begin with. Some of the hopes invested in McCain’s and Obama’s ability to reform politics were always based more on mythology than a fair reading of how they behave when their own self-interest was really at stake.

In his brief U.S. Senate career, Obama did not join in the most ambitious efforts to find a middle ground on divisive issues, such as by joining the “Gang of 14” trying to fashion compromise on judicial appointments.

In his tactical decisions this year, he has been a profile of caution. He rejected serious negotiations to conduct town halls with McCain. This would have been a terrific way for voters to take measure of both men. He promised to accept matching funds – only to change his mind when it was clear he could raise way more money than McCain. He chose a running mate who's spent more than half his life in Washington.

McCain actually has a record of challenging his party and taking unpopular stands. It certainly did not help him inside the GOP to champion campaign finance reform or push for immigration reform that included a clear pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants. But way more often than not, he was a reliable vote for the conservative position on judges, social issues and other matters.

These days, he embraces tax cuts he once opposed, embraces religious figures he once condemned and rarely talks about those campaign finance and immigration bills. During the primaries, he savaged Mitt Romney in ways reminiscent of the way George W. Bush savaged McCain in 2000.

McCain can be faulted for responding to the incentives for politics-as-usual. But those who would fault him, or Obama, might also look at their own role in creating those incentives in the first place.